Presently used receiver devices, such as for example, a radio, television, computer, "set-top-box", or recording device, may receive a plurality of different data streams.
The use and operation of radios and televisions have been well known for many years. Computers, on the other hand, now have the capability of receiving television and radio broadcasts. The Internet, or any other dynamic data transfer media, now provides a potential medium for viewing television programs or listening to audio programs. Therefore, a person may now view a television program, or listen to an audio program, using a computer, or equivalent data transfer media access device. As such, a user may access a particular data stream, such as for example by accessing a web site, or web page on a web site, that broadcasts at least one data stream, and receive a broadcast similar to a television or radio broadcast.
Presently used receivers may be tuned manually (or by remote control such as infra-red emitter or voice activation) to a specific data stream in order to receive the signal carried on the data stream, such as for example, a song on the radio or a program on the television. As such, if a person wishes to listen to a particular radio station or view a particular television channel he must tune each respective device to that particular station or channel. However, if a person wishes to hear a particular program, such as a song on a radio, or see a particular program, such as on a television, he must: 1) know when it will be broadcast; 2) know which station or channel it will be broadcast; and 3) tune the receiving device to that particular station or channel at the time of the broadcast. In an attempt to eliminate this problem, methods have been developed for automatically tuning a device to a particular channel or station.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,370, to Mathews, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a method and apparatus for detecting and playing desired audio segments over a broadcast receiver such as a radio or television. Specifically, Mathews teaches a receiving system wherein desired audio segments are input and stored from an external source such as a RAM or radio station. The desired audio segments are compared with audio segments on radio stations to automatically tune the radio upon detection of the stored audio segments. The system of Mathews may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,749,048 (the '048 patent), to Masuda, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a method and apparatus for detecting desired radio station formats and automatically switching a radio to a format similar to a format of the radio station that the radio is currently tuned to, when signal strength of the current radio station drops below a predetermined threshold. The system of Masuda may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
Similar to the '048 patent, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,152,011 (the '011 patent) and 5,732,338 (the '338 patent), both to Schwob, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, disclose methods and apparatuses for detecting and updating station formats, and may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
So-called "programming guide" services permit programming of a television and/or recording device to automatically tune to a particular channel, at a particular time and date, in order to view a particular program. Examples of such programming guides and the general technology used with such systems may be found in: U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,338 to Schwob; U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,198 to Roop et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,072 to Aristides et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,706,121 to Young; U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,484 to Mankovitz; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,508 to Sakuma et al., the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Permitting a user to program a television, radio, recorder, and/or computer to receive specific programs does not only benefit the user, but further benefits the advertisers.
Television broadcast programs are comprised essentially of first run or syndicated feature programs and commercials, wherein said broadcast programs are either performed live or prerecorded for airing at certain times for specific stations. Commercials often consist of about a 30-second program that is inserted at various times during the viewing day by the station according to contracts made with the commercial owner or advertising agency. This is referred to as buying television time spots. Pursuant to a contract, the television station arranges to insert the commercial program in certain times arranged as part of that contract. For time to time, the television station then bills the buyer of the time spot for having aired the commercial.
The practice over many years has been that a statement is made by the television station under oath to the effect that the commercials were aired at the times bought and that said airing was within the terms contracted. Upon receipt of the sworn statement and the bill, those documents are compared manually, and if they match the commercial time spot that is paid for. However, not all commercials are aired properly and/or at the proper time. This occurs for many different reasons at each of the stations. It has become a practice to audit these airings by visual observation. Such auditing is very time consuming, labor intensive and tedious since it is necessary to monitor all of the channels in any particular area on a round the clock basis. Therefore, only samplings are done for auditing purposes. Such sample auditing is normally done under contract, and conducted by employees who record what they see on the television and return such records to their employer for collation and reporting. Because of the labor-intensive nature of the sample auditing it is very expensive and not always reliable.
Radio broadcasts have similar time spot billing practices. Therefore advertisers face similar problems when contracting for radio station time spots.
Large sums of money are spent annually to purchase advertising time on broadcast radio and television. This has created a need to monitor and report on the broadcast of radio and television programs in general and commercials in particular. As such, various methods and systems have been developed in order to automatically monitor programs broadcast by both television and radio stations. These methods deal with sending information that describes a particular broadcast along with the broadcast signal, such that the receiving system may identify the broadcast signal. Non-limiting examples of these methods include sending the descriptive information during the vertical blanking interval ("VBI") for television systems, sending the descriptive information within the closed captioned ("CC") portion of the video signal for television systems, and sending the descriptive information along an audio frequency sub-carrier for either radio or television systems.
Examples of systems describing a method of sending the descriptive information during the VBI for television systems include, U.S. Pat. No. 4,025,851, to Haselwood, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,779, to Greenberg, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, and which may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
An example of a system describing a method for sending the descriptive information within the CC portion of the video signal for television systems is U.S. Pat. No. 4,857,999, to Welsh, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, and which may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
An example of a system describing a method for sending the descriptive information along an audio frequency sub-carrier for either radio or television systems is U.S. Pat. No. 3,845,391, to Crosby, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, and which may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
An example of a system describing a method for sending the descriptive information simultaneously with the broadcast program in a multiplex modulation format in a radio system is U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,682, to Tomohiro, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, and which may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
Furthermore, with respect to digital information broadcasting, a method of packetizing the data may be used. With this method, data is grouped into packets, such as audio, video, and miscellaneous packets, wherein the manipulation of the data is simplified by manipulating the data packets. An example of a system describing a method for sending descriptive information simultaneously with a broadcast program as a digital packetized transmission is U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,165, to Echeita et al., the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, and which may be used with multiple embodiments of the present invention.
As such, there still remains a need for a system that provides easy user programming of a receiver system for automatic tuning to a broadcast of a specific program.